larasetrakian

A Response Press Statement

16-09-2009

We were profoundly saddened to hear the news of the death of the young Yemeni girl, Fawzeya Abdullah Yousef (age 12).  Our prayers and thoughts are with the family of the deceased. Over the years, the government of Yemen has embarked on an awareness campaign to end the practice of young marriages, which has been deeply rooted in the rural cultures of Yemen. Furthermore, the government of Yemen introduced to Parliament a proposed amendment to the Marriage Law, in order to raise the minimum marriage age to 17. Unfortunately, prior to the ratification of the amendments by the Honorable President Ali Abdullah Saleh, members of the conservative block in the Parliament have rescinded the proposed amendments to allow for further deliberations. It is anticipated that the matter will be finalized in the near future, and it is deemed an important priority of the government. It is worth noting too, that there have been recent efforts from the Ministry of Health in cooperation with World Bank to also establish emergency labor clinics in rural villages with the aim of reducing infant and maternity mortality.

Mohammed Albasha

Spokesman

Embassy of the Republic of Yemen

Washington, D.C.

"I was standing in the square (baharestan) I was watching the crowd. All of a sudden a filthy bearded guy appeared in front of me and said, "what the hell are you doing here?"

I said, "Nothing."

He said, "Let me see your purse."

Inside my purse he found my camera.

He took me and forced me into a minibus.

They immediately tied something around my eyes and started hitting me with all their might. When the minibus started moving they took out their electric baton and would keep it on my body for 4-5 seconds till it made me have epileptic-like fits.

Then they took me to a villa. The tied our hands in the back and told us to kneel on the ground like in prayer (for 12 hours they kept us like that!)

The interrogator entered the room and said, "You take Mousavi’s side??? He, whose wife was a whore before the revolution, Yes?? Now I will show you.

During the interrogation (lets not get into how much they molested us) I was one of the lucky ones, when they interrogated the girl next to me the guy had his hand up her underwear.

A pretty girl who was there was taken to another room the minute they saw her!

They also tortured us mentally. They had put a chair there and had connected it to electricity. They asked, "Who paid you to come out and demonstrate?" There was a noise from the electrically charged chair, "tell me who your bosses are or I will have you for the night. In the end they made us sign a paper blind folded. It was 4:30 a.m. when they took, us to a square in the south of Tehran and let us go and asked us to open our blind folds in five minutes.

Iran: Free Disabled Reformist

Condition of Saeed Hajjarian, Who Exposed Intelligence Ministry Killings in 1990s, Has Deteriorated

Hajjarian, 55, was detained without charge on June 15, 2009, and has neither seen a lawyer nor received adequate medical care. He was one of scores of prominent reformist politicians, intellectuals, journalists, clerics, student leaders, and others whom the authorities arrested in an effort to stamp out nationwide protests against the disputed results of Iran's June 12 elections.

A senior intelligence official in the 1980s, Hajjarian became a leading strategist in the reformist movement in the 1990s and a political adviser to then-President Mohammed Khatami in 1997. His newspaper, Sobh-e Emrooz (Today's Morning), played a major role in exposing the involvement of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence in a series of killings and disappearances of leading intellectuals in the late 1990s.

On March 12, 2000, when Hajjarian was a member of the Tehran city council, a gunman on a motorcycle shot him in the face in front of the city council building. Hajjarian survived, despite lapsing into a coma for more than a week, but is permanently disabled, largely wheelchair-bound, and requires ongoing medical assistance and monitoring.Zeinab Hajjarian, Saeed Hajjarian's daughter who lives in the United States, told Human Rights Watch that her father has been subjected to increasing physical and psychological pressure in detention.

Her information is based on an account by her mother, Vajihe Marsoosi, who is a medical doctor and who visited her husband in Evin prison on July 24. Hajjarian told his wife that interrogators regularly questioned him outdoors under the sun in temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). Based upon her visit and evaluation of her husband's health, Marsoosi suspected he was at risk of serious cardiac and hepatic complications.

Marsoosi told her daughter: "His color seemed yellow and not normal. He was completely weak and was unable to speak easily. He seemed under a lot of psychological pressure." Marsoosi said she took Hajjarian's pulse and noticed irregularities, raising concern about a serious heart problem.

"His conditions clearly showed that he was not being taken care of," her daughter quoted her as saying. "It seemed like they were trying to have him killed."

Zeinab Hajjarian said that when Marsoosi asked the interrogators when they would release her husband, they replied, "When their project is done." They did not specify what the "project" was. Many detainees have come under intense pressure to sign false confessions supporting the authorities' assertion that Iran's post-election protests are instigated and backed by foreign powers and designed to topple the government.

Zeinab Hajjarian told Human Rights Watch that her mother said that prison authorities were not allowing his family to provide Hajjarian with the medications necessary to treat his condition. His condition requires careful administration of a range of prescribed medicines; incorrect administration can result in serious harm.

Besides putting pressure on Hajjarian himself, the authorities have also interrogated and harassed his son Mohsen, and his wife, who both live in Iran. A security officer reportedly warned them that Hajjarian would come under more pressure if they reported the conditions of his detention to the media.

Zainab Hajjarian told Human Rights Watch that anonymous persons, who she thinks were Iranian security agents, have contacted her by email in the United States and warned her against reporting anything regarding her father's condition.The UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners require that:

"Sick prisoners who require specialist treatment shall be transferred to specialized institutions or to civil hospitals." Failing to provide adequate medical care for a seriously ill detainee has been considered inhuman or degrading treatment by international courts, a very serious human rights violation.

"The Iranian government is exploiting Hajjarian's poor health and disability, apparently in order to force him to make a false confession, in line with the abusive interrogation pattern we've been seeing," said Stork. "The Iranian authorities are completely responsible for his well-being. They should release him to his family and medical caregivers immediately."

For more Human Rights Watch reporting on Iran, please visit:

If you talk to my grandma who doesn’t go out much and doesn’t hear much about the unrest (it’s never on the news or anything), then she’ll tell you everything’s like how it always has been… no change. But if you talk to the younger people or just people who follow politics and what’s going on more, then they will say there is definitely an atmosphere of both fear and resistance in all the major cities of Iran, not just Tehran, and that even if nothing comes of everything that’s happening, at least the world will know that Iranians are unhappy with their government and that the Iranian government is not representative of the Iranian people.

One of my cousins is married to a Bazari and he said him and all his Bazari friends are pro change/pro Mousavi. But they aren’t as vocal about this as they might want to be because they are scared of the government coming and closing down their business. To them, providing for their families is more important than fighting for something that’s so unsure.

I just got back from a village trip. I asked around about what people thought about Iran’s political situation and most people were pro Ahmadinejad. Also, most of them didn’t know about the protests and stuff going on.

There are still shouts of Allah-o-Akbar at 10:15 every night, which last until 10:30, but they have significantly decreased. I do it with my cousins every now and then. This is how it goes: we go to the roof once we hear one or two yells at around 10:15. Then we sit by a wall so that no one can see us and we yell. Allah-o-Akbar starts off the yelling. And it’s cool because you can hear it from all around, but you can’t see anyone since there is a rumor that snipers go on top of rooftops to shoot anyone they see doing it. Then someone starts it off and the yelling switches to “Marg bar dictator” (Death to the dictator). Then again someone else changes it to “Ya Hossein,” with another person responding “Mirhossein” (This is obviously the name of Mousavi).

One person had his arm shattered in different places, another had a broken skulls. As soon as we came out of the houses they continued to use the tear gas and batons. We ran, but it was no use. A young girl and young man were killed in front of us. Know that it was the disciplinary forces that fired the bullets and were attacking people with the batons and tear gas. The plainclothes officers did not have batons, they had planks of wood to beat us to death. The Ansar (special forces) were also there, they took a young guy right in front of us. The police were attacking people; once they targeted someone they would catch them and hit them to death. There were a lot of people lost/disappeared.

The mobile phones were cut off in many areas. Our only hope was people's houses who had opened their doors to us. They had water and fire to counteract the tear gas and they all had first aid kits. After a lot of running away and chasing, we tried to get out of being encircled by police. The only option seemed like suicide -- we had to cross them, passing through hundreds of officers. They did not think that any protesters would come toward them, so they didn't think we were part of the demonstration. There was a lot going on during the rest of our journey, but all the roads heading toward Vali Asr were filled with cars honking their horns in protest. The police hitting the cars as well, using batons on

We were in the red zone and it was nothing less than war. Pray for us."

"Two weeks ago that they raided our house. They threatened to break the door down, so my sister let them in. They went through my dad’s personal belongings, took [Karroubi] campaign material and his computer from the campaign. Since then he’s been in hiding. They tracked him down yesterday. One of his friends gave a call to let us know he had been arrested.

I expect he’ll be in solitary confinement and pressed to do confessions. Anything that comes out of him as a confession is under torture or pressure. Anything he confesses to is illegitimate. He has done nothing wrong. All he’s been doing is reporting what is going on. He was freely expressing his opinion, it’s his constitutional right.

My dad is just one of so many who’ve been arrested during the past few weeks. He lost his brother in the Iran-Iraq war. He is part of this country and the country means a lot for him."

A group called the “Mourning Mother of Iran” holds a vigil in Laleh Park that is broken up by police. They sent us this statement:

We continue to mourn…

The silent mourning of mothers on Saturday June 27^th 2009 in Laleh Park in Tehran was violently suppressed by security forces. A number of mothers and young women attending this peaceful gathering/sit-in were detained by the security forces. Despite the violent crackdown by the security forces and their attempt to disperses the attendees, more than 500 women and mothers were able to continue with the sit-in and gatherings in the central spot of the park. These mothers were peacefully gathering to commemorate the young men and women who had participated in the non-violent post-election demonstrations and had been martyred.

Following our first announcement, we- the mourning mothers of the martyrs- will continue with our peaceful sit-in in Laleh Park and other parks in Tehran. We will do so till we see the end of violence on the streets, freeing of all those arrested for participating in the peaceful protests after the June 12^th election specially our fellow mothers who had been arrested last Saturday and the prosecution of those responsible for our children’s death. Our sit-ins will be in Laleh park and the following parks every Saturday from 7-8 p.m.

Laleh Park

Andishe Park

Mellat Park

Gofegoo Park

Dear Mothers! Our mother instinct has forced us to demand justice for our children and freeing those who are unlawfully detained in prisons. We invite you to join our grassroots peaceful gatherings in the above-mentioned parks on Saturdays of each week.

To our boys and brothers in the security forces! We are your mothers. We treat you with respect as mothers. Respect us and our wishes and refrain from inflicting harm onto your mothers. Our sighs will follow you if you treat us with violence.

The Mourning Mothers of Iran